Myanmar script summary

This page provides basic information about the Myanmar script and its use for the Burmese language. The phonetic information and examples are for Burmese. It is not authoritative, peer-reviewed information – these are just notes I have gathered or copied from various places as I learned. For similar information related to other scripts, see the Script comparison table.

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Clicking on red text examples, or highlighting part of the sample text shows a list of characters, with links to more details. Click on the vertical blue bar (bottom right) to change font settings for the sample text.

The Myanmar script was adapted from the Mon script, a descendent of Brahmi, and is found in stone inscriptions dating from the 12th century. It is used for writing the Burmese and Mon languages, both spoken in Myanmar (previously Burma). The two languages differ in how some phonemic values are assigned to letters. The script is also used, with character extensions, to write some of the Karen languages spoken in Myanmar and Thailand.

The Burmese alphabet (Burmese: မြန်မာအက္ခရာ; pronounced [mjəmà ʔɛʔkʰəjà]) is an abugida used for writing Burmese. It is ultimately a Brahmic script adapted from either the Kadamba or Pallava alphabet of South India, and more immediately an adaptation of Old Mon or Pyu script. The Burmese alphabet is also used for the liturgical languages of Pali and Sanskrit.

In recent decades, other, related alphabets, such as Shan and modern Mon, have been restructured according to the standard of the now-dominant Burmese alphabet. ...

The earliest evidence of the Burmese alphabet is dated to 1035, while a casting made in the 18th century of an old stone inscription points to 984. Burmese calligraphy originally followed a square format but the cursive format took hold from the 17th century when popular writing led to the wider use of palm leaves and folded paper known as parabaiks. A stylus would rip these leaves when making straight lines. The alphabet has undergone considerable modification to suit the evolving phonology of the Burmese language.

The script is an abugida, ie. consonants carry an inherent vowel sound that is overridden, where needed, using vowel signs. See the table to the right for a brief overview of features, taken from the Script Comparison Table.

Spaces are used to separate phrases, rather than words. Words can be separated with U+200C ZERO WIDTH NON-JOINER to allow for easy wrapping of text.

Text runs from left to right, horizontally.

There are a set of Myanmar numerals, which are used just like Latin digits.

Words are composed of syllables. These start with an consonant or initial vowel. An initial consonant may be followed by a medial consonant, which adds the sound j or w. After the vowel, a syllable may end with a nasalisation of the vowel or an unreleased glottal stop, though these final sounds can be represented by various different consonant symbols.

At the end of a syllable a final consonant usually has an 'asat' sign above it, to show that there is no inherent vowel.

In multisyllabic words derived from an Indian language such as Pali, where two consonants occur internally with no intervening vowel, the consonants tend to be stacked vertically, and the asat sign is not used.

Character lists

The Myanmar script characters in Unicode 10.0 are in the following blocks:

Native Burmese words use a subset of the consonants that make up
the traditional articulatory arrangement of indic scripts, however additional symbols are available for use in loan words, especially Indian loan
words. These include the retroflex and voiced aspirated consonants. Other characters in the Myanmar Unicode block are used for variations for minority scripts based on myanmar. The latter are not dealt with here.

When there is a consonant at the end of a syllable, it carries a visible mark called a.sat (အသတ်ʔa̰θaʔ) to indicate that the inherent vowel is killed, eg. see the small 'c' like mark over the last character in ဝင်wɪ̀ɴenter. ်[U+103A MYANMAR SIGN ASAT​] is a character introduced in Unicode version 5.1 for this purpose. It is effectively a visible virama.

In many multi-syllabic words (mostly derived from Pali), consonants that have no intervening inherent vowel are
arranged such that the consonant cluster is stacked. The second consonant appears below the first, eg. မန္တလေးmàɴda̰léMandalay, and ဗုဒ္ဓboʊʔda̰Buddha. In some cases the lower character is abbreviated or reoriented, eg. က္ဌ to represent က်ဌ.

This effect is achieved in Unicode by using the character ္[U+1039 MYANMAR SIGN VIRAMA​] between the consonants forming the cluster. Note that the virama is never visible.

Stacked consonants of this kind are always doubled consonants or homorganic.wpAlpha

Consonants may also be stacked in abbreviations of native Burmese words, in which case they may not be homorganic and vowels may be prounounced between the consonants. For example, လက်ဖက်lɛʔpʰɛʔtea is sometimes abbreviated to လ္ဘက်.wpAlpha

Where the same consonant appears at the end of a syllable and the beginning of a new syllable in the same word they are commonly represented in the usual cluster form, eg. ပိန္နဲသီးpèɪɴnɛ́ dʰíjackfruit.

In a few Burmese words, however, a doubled consonant is represented by a single consonant plus asat, eg. ယောက်ျားjaʊʔtɕáman, husband and ကျွန်ုပ်tɕʊ̀ɴnoʊʔfirst person singular. Note how this produces a situation where an asat is used between a consonant and a medial or vowel sign.Hosken

It is also possible to find two
medials associated with a consonant, eg. လျှlʰjá or ʃá and မြွေmwèsnake.

The combination of velar stop and medial RA or YA are pronounced as tɕ, eg. ကြက်tɕɛʔchicken, ကျပ်tɕaʔto be tight.

Note that Pali and Sanskrit texts written in the Myanmar script, as well as in older orthographies of Burmese, sometimes render the consonants YA, RA, WA and HA in subjoined form. In those cases, U+1039 MYANMAR SIGN VIRAMA and the regular form of the consonant are used.Unicode, 597

The medial HA is used to create aspirated versions of consonants, and also to create the sound ʃ. The latter is represented by either ရှ or လျှ (see the example above), depending on the word, eg. ရှိတယ်ʃḭdɛ̀to have.

The old spelling of many words uses a fifth medial consonant, la swe, eg. ခ္လိုဝ်းhkluiw:wash, which is produced using just a subjoined လ[U+101C MYANMAR LETTER LA].

In Unicode 5.0, ်[U+103A MYANMAR SIGN ASAT​] did not exist, and U+1039 MYANMAR SIGN VIRAMA had to be used for both visible and non-visible viramas. This approach was problematic in that, since there are no spaces between words, it is not easy to automatically ascertain whether
a virama should appear above a consonant or cause the stacking effect. For example, should my sequence of characters appear like this, အမ်မီတာ, or like this အမ္မီတာ? To get
around this in Unicode 5.0 you needed to use a U+200C ZERO WIDTH NON-JOINER (ZWNJ) after the virama if you wanted it to remain visible (ie. the first example above would have been
transcribed as øm̸ˣʲmītā and the second as øm̸mītā). The non-joiner prevents stacking. In
practice, this meant that there were very many ZWNJ characters in Burmese text, since there are many syllable-final consonants needing ASAT, and typing in the Myanmar script was therefore much more time-consuming than it needed to be.

Unicode 5.1 also introduced dedicated medial consonants. This makes it easier to type Myanmar text, but also allows for easy distinction of subjoined variants of these consonants rather than the usual medial forms.

One or two other characters were introduced, such as the TALL AA (described below).

Burmese aspirates many consonants. In some cases these are separate characters, in other cases the aspiration is indicated using ှ[U+103E MYANMAR CONSONANT SIGN MEDIAL HA​]. Aspirated sounds include the followingMesher, 12, where the last six use MEDIAL HA:

Unvoiced syllable initial consonants are typically pronounced with voicing when they appear in non-initial syllables of a word or in particle suffixes, unless they follow a syllable with stopped tone or follow the အ[U+1021 MYANMAR LETTER A] prefix. Aspirated consonants lose their aspiration at the same time. For example, သတင်းစာ farmer is pronounced θədɪ́ɴzà not θətɪ́ɴsà. However, because of the rule about the stopped tone (ie. a syllable ending in a plosive consonant), တစ်ဆယ် ten is pronounced təʔsʰɛ̀ not təʔzɛ̀.

Note that care needs to be taken with compound words, since they contain more than one word-initial syllable, eg. နားထောင် listen is pronounced nátʰàʊɴ not nádàʊɴ .Mesher, 175-176

Some conventions exist for representing foreign sounds. f is ဖ (usually pʰ), v is ဗ (usually b) or ဗွ (usually bw), eg. တီဗွီtìbwì. A foriegn syllable final sound can be rendered by placing a second killed consonant
after the syllable, sometimes in parentheses, eg. ဘတ်(စ်)basbus.

The inherent vowel is a. Very often this is reduced phonetically to ə.

The independent form, used for syllable initial position, is represented using အ[U+1021 MYANMAR LETTER A] as a base, eg. အတန်းʔətáɴclass. Note that this is classed as a consonant rather than a vowel by the Burmese, and carries the inherent vowel when used alone.

As mentioned above, the consonant အ[U+1021 MYANMAR LETTER A] is used as a support for vowel signs, and the combination of that and the
vowel sign is the normal native way of showing independent/initial vowels, eg. အိတ်ʔeɪʔbag.

Some independent/initial vowels have an alternative form that is used in some words only - typically Indian loan words, eg. ဧရာဝတီʔèjàwa̰dìIrawaddy river, ဩဂုတ်ʔɔ́goʊʔAugust, and ဤʔìthis. There are normally different forms for specific tones, and normally only one or two vowel+tone combinations have
these forms.

Vowel signs appear above, below, or to the left or right of the base consonant. There are also vowel sign combinations that appear both top and bottom, or left and right.

A consonant cluster is treated as a unit when it comes to vowel-signs, for example အငွေa.ngwe, where the E is displayed to the left of the NGA although the
character appears after the WA in memory.

On the other hand, vowel signs that would normally appear below a consonant are normally displayed to the right if something else intrudes on that space, such as a stacked consonant eg. စက္ကူsɛʔkùpaper, or a medial consonant eg. အဖြူʔəpʰjùwhite, or a consonant with a 'descender' eg. အညိုʔəɲòbrown.

In order to avoid visual confusion, there are two forms of the long -aa vowel sign in Burmese. The combination wà would be hard to distinguish from တta̰, so a taller form of AA is used, ါ[U+102B MYANMAR VOWEL SIGN TALL AA​]. This form, whether alone or as part of a complex vowel, is used after the following consonants:

list all

ခ

ဂ

င

ဒ

ပ

ဝ

For example, ပေါင်pàʊɴthigh. Where there is no ambiguity, however, the normal shape is used, eg. ပြောင်းဖူးpjáʊɴbúcorn.

Whereas in Unicode 5.0 the choice of appropriate form was left to the font or implementation during rendering, such contextual decisions are not appropriate for Sgaw Karen and other minority scripts, which only use the tall form, so ါ[U+102B MYANMAR VOWEL SIGN TALL AA​] was added to Unicode 5.1 as a separate character.Unicode, 597

There are four tones in Burmese, creaky, low, high and stopped. A vowel plus tone combination is called a rhyme. The tone of a syllable can be
indicated by the vowel used, or by a combination of vowel and diacritic. The stopped tone only, but always, occurs where a syllable ends in a stop consonant. Syllables that end with a vowel sound and syllables that end with the nasal sound ɴcan have one or more of the other three tones.

Myanmar tones ([Mesher], p7)

The phonemic transcriptions here use the following conventions for marking tones, using a as the base for the examples.

The following table shows the normal combinations of vowel, final consonant and tone mark characters that are seen in Burmese, and their pronunciations. Read down the left column to find the symbol used for the vowel sound, and across the top row to find syllable final consonants. The table doesn't take vowel reduction into account.

There are 7 main vowel sounds in open syllables. The following lists those sounds and their different representations for the three tones
in Burmese, creaky, low and high, that apply to open syllables. (Combining symbols are shown with အ, and alternate independent forms are shown in parentheses.)

description

low

high

creaky

example

a

Primary central

အာ

အား

inherent

လာlàcome

i

Primary front

အီ

အီး (ဤ)

အိ (ဣ)

မီးmífire

u

Primary back

အူ (ဦ)

အူး

အု (ဥ)

တူtùchopsticks

e

High front mid

အေ

အေး (ဧ)

အေ့

နှေးn̥éslow

o

High back mid

အို

အိုး

အို့

ဆိုးsʰóbad

ɛ

Low front mid

အယ်

အဲ

အဲ့

ဘယ်bɛ̀which

ɔ

Low back mid

အော် (ဪ)

အော (ဩ)

အော့

ပျော်pjɔ̀happy

The following table summarises the above in a way that allows you to see how the various tones are applied to open syllables using
the native Myanmar characters. Where long vs. short forms exist, for the purposes of clarity in the table, the long form is taken here to be the standard form and the short form a variant.

Vowels in 'closed' syllables end in a glottal stop or nasalisation. Historically, however, they ended in one of four nasals or four
stops, and this is still reflected in the orthography. The vowel quality has also evolved in these syllables, typically producing diphthongs.

To indicate that the consonant is syllable-final, an asat is placed over it.

The sound values of vowel signs used in open and closed syllables differs systematically as follows.

i becomes eɪ, eg. အိန်ʔèɪɴ; အိတ်ʔeɪʔ.

u becomes oʊ, eg.အုန်ʔòʊɴ; အုတ်ʔoʊʔ.

ɔ becomes aʊ, eg. အောင်ʔàʊɴ; အောက်ʔaʊʔ.

o becomes aɪ, eg. အိုင်ʔàɪɴ; အိုက်ʔaɪʔ.

The inherent a is a lot more complicated, becoming one of ɪ, e, a, or ɛ.

The list of most common sounds are show in the large table above, and in the smaller tables below. There are other combinations of vowel and final consonant found in Burmese words of Indian origin, which often stick to the original
Indian spelling, however, they tend to follow Burmese pronunciation, eg. ဓာတ်daʔ, ဗိုလ်bò, ဥယ္ယာဉ်ʔṵjaɴ.

The following table shows the order in which characters should be typed and stored in memory for a given syllable, per the description in the Unicode Standard. (It is Burmese-specific and doesn't reflect the order or characters needed for languages such as Karen, Mon, Shan, etc.) Unicode, 598-9

The following schematic shows sequences that typically make up a syllable in Burmese. Start with the C (consonant) on the left, or IV (initial vowel) and travel from left to right only. You can stop at any point. The plus sign in the box represents the virama – this should be followed immediately by another syllable, as should the kinzi.

The ASAT varies its position and shape according to context, eg. လမ်းláɴ road, but ဒေါ်လေးdɔ̀lé aunt.

The shape of NA changes when something appears below it, eg.နို့နဲ့no̰nɛ̰with milk. Similarly, the bottom of NYA ဉ also changes in the following context, ပဉ္စမpɪ̀ɴza̰ma̰fifth.

The placement of the ့[U+1037 MYANMAR SIGN DOT BELOW​], used as a tone mark, varies slightly according to context, eg. ပြီးခဲ့တဲ့pígɛ̰dɛ̰last, ago and တချို့tətɕʰo̰some, as does that of ှ[U+103E MYANMAR CONSONANT SIGN MEDIAL HA​], eg. it is smaller than usual in ကောက်ညှင်းkaʊʔɲ̥ɪ́ɴsticky rice, and the shape and position are very different in ရွှေပဲသီးʃwebɛ̀ snow peas.

A common approach to justification is to adjust inter-phrase spacing so that the line breaks at a phrase boundary.Hosken 12

If it is necessary to break text within a phrase, breaks can occur at syllable boundaries, but not within a word. The difficulty is that there is no visual information about which sequences of syllables consitute a word.

The best way of detecting line-break opportunities is to use a dictionary to search for polysyllabic words, and then break at syllable boundaries outside the word. This approach may run into problems when uncommon words or new words are used, especially those borrowed foreign terms.

An alternative is to indicate break points by inserting U+200B ZERO WIDTH SPACE between words when the content is developed, although this can lead to a lot of extra work.

Another alternative is to tie the syllables in a word together using U+2060 WORD JOINER while authoring the content. This requires less intervention, since the number of polysyllabic words is smaller than the total number of words, but applications must be able to ignore the word joiner for searching, sorting, and the like. For this reason Hosken recommends against using it, and recommends instead the use of a dictionary with ZWSP backup for words that the dictionary doesn't handle well. However, it's not clear which words a dictionary will fail to recognise when the text is used across different platforms and applications, so this is not an ideal solution either – not to mention that it is difficult for an author to know in advance which words will cause problems and which won't.Hosken, 12